Jean Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard was born into a wealthy Swiss family in France in 1930. His parents sent him to live in Switzerland when war broke out, but in the late 40's he returned to Paris to study ethnology at the Sorbonne. He became acquainted with Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, forming part of a group of passionate young film-makers devoted to exploring new possibilities in cinema. They were the leading lights of Cahiers du Cinéma, where they published their radical views on film. Godard's obsession with cinema beyond all else led to alienation from his family who cut off his allowance. Like the small time crooks he was to feature in his films, he supported himself by petty theft. He was desperate to put his theories into practice so he took a job working on Swiss dam and used it as an opportunity to film a documentary on the project. The construction firm bought the film, an early indicator of Godard's more recent success working on corporate video commissions. A bout de souffle (Breathless) (1959) was his first feature, based on an idea by Truffaut. Made on a shoestring budget with Chabrol as artistic supervisor. Suddenly the typical B-feature crime plot was reborn, with startling cinematic techniques, hand-held camerawork and natural lighting. References to Sam Fuller and Humphrey Bogart and quotations from Faulkner, Aragon and. It was to be Godard's only box office hit that I could find. By the early 60's Jean-Luc Godard was probably the most discussed director in the world. He made a an enormous impact on the future direction of cinema, influencing film-makers as diverse as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Wong Kar-Wai. As the 60's progressed, Godard became less and less accessible, both in his personal life and his work. After making Week-end (1967), which features a ten-minute tracking shot of a hideous traffic jam, Godard abandoned his increasingly antagonistic relationships with film industry colleagues (his mutual disaffection with Truffaut, for example, is well documented). He left Paris for Switzerland, which has been his home for the last 20 years. Fascinated with developments in new media, he has experimented with video, making several on commission for clients including Channel 4, France Telecom and UNICEF. Amongst his 'revolutionary films for revolutionary people' is his highly regarded eight-hour history of cinema, recently edited into a 90 minute version. His latest film is Eloge de l'amour (In Praise of Love), concerning in part an elderly couple who are former heroes of the Resistance and whose life story Steven Spielberg has offered to buy. The film has just received its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2001 to great acclaim. It is expected to have a British release later this year. Godard's reputation for being a bitter and reclusive figure clearly does not go unnoticed, but is not observed without humour, as a recent anecdote in the New Yorker illustrates. He told Richard Brody that he and his partner (the filmmaker Anne-Marie Mieville) had clipped a cartoon from the paper which exemplifies their situation: a unicorn in a suit is sitting at a desk and talking on the phone with a caption reading "These rumours of my non-existence are making it very difficult for me to obtain financing." In 1979, Godard came back to Commercial movie world again with his self-declared the second debut [Sauve qui peut: La vie (Every man for himself; slow motion)]. From this debutic come-back till present time, it is called the 4th stage. Since this is on-going period, it is hard to evaluate and it is not easy to find consistency among the characteristics of each film he made as much as he showed in the past. Critics are also divided into extremes. Anyway, Godard of this period continues his ceaseless search for the new cinematic experiments with new philosophical approach, demonstrating his well-experienced maturity in his pursuit of 'surface layer and nature of everything' and in deep contemplation on human existence and sometimes on religious issues. Last point.. Godard married three times. His first marriage was with Anna Karina right after filming [a bout de souffle (breathless)] but they got divorced immediately after the completion of Pierrot le fou (Pierrot goes wild). Later, he got married to Anne Wiazemsky who was leading actress of La Chinoise during its filming. His third wife is Anne Marie-Miéville who was joint founder of 'SonImage' company. Although I respect to the endless contemplative but practising life of Godard, I have a perhaps less important but rather quite interesting question raised in my mind about how was his gender role or his role in the family.